1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic calendars.
2. Description of the Related Art
Users commonly maintain electronic calendars in order to track scheduled appointments, organize meetings, provide reminders to attend planned events, and for the convenience of sharing their availability with others through allowing others to view the electronic calendar. Although electronic calendars are convenient for helping users avoid being double-booked for activities occurring at the same time, conventional electronic calendars do not adequately account for implicit conflicts created by the locations of various meetings. For example, scheduling two adjacent meetings or events that occur in different places may not allow enough time to travel between the events.
To address the travel time issue, users have developed a variety of approaches, each with respective drawbacks. First, users may choose not to show travel times between events on their calendar. Drawbacks of this approach include the risk of forgetting about or wrongly estimating the travel time required to arrive at an event and leaving too late. Also, other users viewing the calendar may attempt to schedule a meeting with the user for the slot that was intended by the user for travel to another meeting because the slot appeared to be free.
Second, users may extend the existing meeting to account for the travel time needed to and from the meeting. Drawbacks of this approach include the risk that the user may incorrectly estimate the travel time, and/or forget the actual start time of the meeting. Also, should the meeting be rescheduled, the user must perform the same estimations and extension again. This approach also hinders the user's ability to invite others to the meeting, since the meeting period reflects the user's own travel times and the travel times may vary for others travelling from different locations.
Another approach involves the user manually entering an appointment immediately before and an appointment immediately after any meeting that requires travel in order to block off an estimated travel period on the electronic calendar. This approach is cumbersome for those who travel frequently as any meeting that requires travel becomes a requirement to create three calendar entries that each must be moved if the meeting is rescheduled. This approach also still suffers from the drawback mentioned above regarding the risk that the user may incorrectly estimate the travel time.